Going high-tech: recyclers use custom software to improve their services to their generating customers

Recycling Today, Oct, 2005 by Jackie Gubeno

The scrap peddlers of yesterday might not recognize the industry if they could see it today. Long-gone is the horse-drawn cart: Today, even many recyclers whose companies could be considered small or mid-sized are handling hundreds of customers, processing thousands--even millions--of tons per year.

For modern scrap recyclers, especially those handling industrial accounts, theirs is an industry as sophisticated as any other, and they employ the high-tech tools to match.

Custom software specifically designed for the scrap recycling industry has become as vital a tool to doing business as shears and balers. Recyclers have come to rely on it to improve their level of service, particularly to their generating customers.

Thinking back 10 or 15 years ago, when the few recyclers using software at all were struggling to adapt generic programs to fit their specific business needs, Mike Munafo of Carolinas Recycling Group LLC in Spartanburg, S.C., marvels at how far things have come.

Munafo's Carolinas Recycling Group, which moves more than 1.5 billion pounds of ferrous and nonferrous metal per year through its 10 locations, according to the company's Web site www.cgrmetals.com, uses a program called RIMAS from software provider Shared Logic in Holland, Ohio. "This particular package allows us to manage our business infinitely better than we did 10 or 15 years ago," he says. "I don't know that we could do this without some kind of custom-made software for the scrap business."

Software users boast accurate pricing, timely processing and easy access to information as some of the chief benefits to their business.

BUILDING TRUST. As a general rule, software helps recyclers run their operations more efficiently. There's less paper, less math and far fewer opportunities for errors.

But when dealing with industrial accounts, scrap recyclers have noticed additional benefits.

"Being able to add value to our customers' scrap mix is where we can provide superior service," says Dale Watkins, CFO of Joe Krentzman & Sons Inc., in Lewiston, Pa.

Watkins' operation uses ScrapWare2000, a program by ScrapWare Corp. of Rockville, Md. Watkins says custom software has helped him help his generating customers get the most out of their scrap.

"We understand that scrap is not the bread and butter of many manufacturers," says Watkins. For some of his industrial accounts, scrap is more of a necessary by-product, and that attitude means that generators can miss out on the true value of the scrap they bring in by mixing lower value materials with those of higher value.

Watkins recalls a company that was bringing in both steel turnings and brass turnings. The software showed that the customer was producing both, but combining the turnings and getting far less for its material.

The software enabled Watkins to pull that information and inform his customer that it could get a better price by separating the material.

That's the kind of honest service that builds trust between a recycler and a scrap generator, according to Watkins. "I want to be able to pay that customer more if they're bringing that volume to the table," he says.

Even if they don't get the opportunity to go above and beyond the call of duty, using software helps build trust in other, everyday business ways, according to Jennifer Nicoli, assistant manager of Cherry City Metals in Salem, Ore.

Cherry City Metals uses Recycling Operations Manager (ROM), a 21st Century Programming (Long Beach, Calif.) software system.

The accurate weighing provided by software is an invaluable way to build a trusting relationship with generators, Nicoli says. She says the ROM program has a feature that locks a scale weight so that it can't be manipulated--either on purpose or by accident.

Cherry City Metals employs a "double-weight system," where an entire truck is weighed, that weight is locked into the computer and then the material is sorted and separated and weighed again to make sure that the numbers match, according to Nicoli. "The double-weight system creates a lot of trust," she says. "We can assure that no one is taken advantage of."

Using digital photos of material, in addition to providing proof of weight, goes a long way toward smoothing relations between scrap recyclers and their generators, especially if there's a question, according to Mark Weis of Wimco Metals in Pittsburgh, which uses software from RECY America Inc., Collegeville, Pa.

In addition to having pictures and computer records as proof if there's a weight shortage or a shipment of a commodity that doesn't match the sales order, Weis says that software makes the whole process of addressing the problem a lot quicker.

SAVING TIME. Time is money in any business, and software helps scrap recyclers move more quickly in everyday operations, in addition to when questions or problems arise.

"We used to bring in a customer, weigh him in, hand write the weight, send it upstairs to the office to rewrite the weights and figure the prices...you can imagine how tedious that got," recalls Nicoli. "What used to take multiple steps now only takes one or two."